Exclusive fullscreen vs borderless
Also searched as: exclusive fullscreen · borderless · borderless windowed · fullscreen optimizations · windowed fullscreen
What it means
Two ways a game can own your screen. Exclusive fullscreen hands the whole display to the game; borderless runs it in a maximized window that Windows still composites.
More detail
Exclusive can give slightly lower latency and lets some VRR and color features kick in cleanly; borderless makes alt-tabbing and overlays seamless. Modern Windows narrows the gap with a feature it applies automatically, which you can turn off per game to test. …
In the Blackbook
The deeper explanation continues inside the app. The Blackbook publishes its verdicts here — the full write-ups stay in the book, on your rig, next to your own measurements.
The Compy Blackbook holds 191 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.
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